Director Tina Bull has joined the roster of production/post company Humble, which is headed by president/exec producer Eric Berkowitz. Bull began her career on title sequences for the BBC and CH4. Her hands-on design approach meant that she was responsible for all aspects of the job from conception through to compositing, resulting in an in depth knowledge of all aspects of postproduction. This ability to cross her intricate design skills with character development and emotive performance saw Bull's work rapidly move into the commercial world. A former creative director at London-based advertising/design house English & Pockett, Bull honed her skills producing high-end brand identities for a broad range of media and entertainment services and as a result won worldwide Promax Gold Awards four straight years. Her spotmaking credits span such clients as British Airways, P&G, Bendigo Bank, Unilever, Nestle, Yamaha and Neutrogena….Spatial Harmonics Group, a Venice, Calif.-based visual effects/creative content development studio founded last year by creative director/VFX supervisor Wayne England, has named Marie Soto to serve as executive producer. Soto's experience includes senior production and sales roles with Belief Design, Riot and @radical.media. She will manage new business development and sales for Spatial Harmonics Group, which has turned out such recent work as visual effects for the feature film Green Lantern and ad projects for AT&T, Lexus and Toyota's Scion….Postique, a Southfield, Mich.-based division of Grace & Wild, Inc., has brought motion graphics artist Alex Chapman and graphics assistant Jason Martin to its Design Group. Chapman comes over from Root Learning where she worked in both the video & effects editing, and concepting illustration departments. Martin most recently served as multimedia team leader/project manager for Ford Motor Co…..
USC Annenberg Report: Female Protagonists Reach Parity With Men In Top-Grossing Films Of 2024
For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday.
Movies like "Wicked,""Inside Out 2" and "The Substance" lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%.
"This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films," Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.
"In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the number one film of the year, Disney's 'Inside Out 2,'" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen."
Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles... Read More